The kanban board will let teams visualize the flow of backlog items in development using Scrum or kanban agile methods. Team Foundation Server, meanwhile, is getting command-line tools, called Git-tf, to make it easier to use a local Git repository with TFS. The tools allow users to clone sources from TFS, fetch updates, and update TFS with changes committed locally in Git. Microsoft also launched on its Codeplex project site, enabling community participation in enhancing Git-tf.

Kanban emphasizes just-in-time delivery without overloading software developers, with developers pulling work back from a queue. The process from definition of task to delivery is displayed for participants. Microsoft's kanban accommodations recognize growing interest in this methodology, Brian Harry, Microsoft technical fellow for TFS, said in a on Monday. "Now you can manage your project with Scrum, with kanban, or you can combine them to get the best of both by using kanban [to] visualize the flow of your Scrum backlog items," Harry said. "Scrum and kanban are both work management strategies that involve breaking down a problem and then visually transitioning work through a series of states."

In another Monday, Harry cited team accommodations in Git-tf. "You may have a TFS project that's been running for a while. Most of your dev team is using our Visual Studio or Eclipse integration and [are] perfectly happy. At the same time, you've got a few people who want or need to use Git. Maybe they are the XCode developers on the team and they like the native Git integration in the XCode IDE. Git-tf allows them to work with XCode's Git integration and collaborate with other team members through TFS."

While limited to TFS at the moment, Microsoft plans to add support for Git-tf to Team Foundation Service.